PRESS
RELEASE
Grand
Prairie Public Library System
Dallas
independent filmmaker Cynthia Salzman-Mondell will be honored for her
body of work at the 2nd Annual Lois Weber Film Festival. The Film
Festival, which screens movies and documentaries by female directors,
is hosted by the Grand Prairie Public Library and held at Grand
Prairie’s historic Uptown Theater.
At 7:30 pm
on Friday, October 19, the Library will award Salzman-Mondell the
Lois Weber Award, for her impact on the Texas motion picture
industry. Her movie The Ladies
Room will be screened.
The Ladies
Room takes you where no man has gone before … a hilarious 42-minute
documentary about what really goes on behind closed doors. Women
share stories of love, sex, marriage and divorce, and comment on
everything from body image to their mothers … all the while fixing
their hair and makeup.
Cynthia
believes that films do make a difference in people's lives. This
motivates her to marry her love for film and commitment to social
change. She is now working on a film Sole
Sisters, a fascinating
exploration of women's identity told and seen through the intimate
relationship between a woman and her shoes. Learn more at
www.solesistersfilm.com.
She is
co-founder with her husband Allen Mondell of award-winning film
production and distribution company Media Projects, Inc.
www.mediaprojects.org.
The
festival continues on Saturday, October 20.
11 am: Kung
Fu Panda 2, by director
Jennifer Yuh. 90 min. Rated PG. A murderous villain with a secret
weapon that could end kung fu threatens Po, now the Dragon Warrior.
1:30 pm:
Louie Louie,
by director Cynthia Salzman Mondell. 29 min. Unrated. From the
director: this portrait of a man living with Parkinson's disease
provides an extremely insightful look into the physical and
psychosocial challenges of this illness and the human will to
survive.
2 pm:
Christopher Strong,
by director Dorothy Arzner. 79 min. Stars Katharine Hepburn as Lady
Cynthia Darrington, a record-setting aviatrix who falls in love with
a married Member of Parliament.
3:15 pm:
The Sari Soldiers,
by director Julie Bridgham. 92 minutes. Unrated.
From the
studio: Filmed over three years during the most historic and pivotal
time in Nepal’s modern history, The
Sari Soldiers is an
extraordinary story of six women’s courageous efforts to shape
Nepal’s future in the midst of an escalating civil war against
Maoist insurgents, and the King’s crackdown on civil liberties.
When Devi, mother of a 15-year-old girl, witnesses her niece being
tortured and murdered by the Royal Nepal Army, she speaks publicly
about the atrocity. The army abducts her daughter in retaliation, and
Devi embarks on a three-year struggle to uncover her daughter’s
fate and see justice done.
The
Sari Soldiers intimately
delves into the extraordinary journey of women on opposing sides of
the conflict, through the democratic revolution that reshapes the
country’s future.
5 pm: The
Savages, by director Tamara
Jenkins. 114 min. Rated R.
Stars Laura
Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Two siblings still recovering from
the abuse inflicted by their estranged father are forced into caring
for him as his dementia increases.
Tickets
each day for the festival are $5, or $3 with a Grand Prairie Library
card. They are available at the Theater Box Office. The Theater and
box office are located at 120 E. Main Street.
The Grand
Prairie Main Library is the site of the Lois Weber Collection, a
circulating collection of more than 300 films directed by women, from
all time periods and many countries. Library cards are free, even to
non-residents. The Main Library is located at 901 Conover Drive, in
Grand Prairie. Visit www.gptx.org/library for more information.
